


Stains

by Elisexyz



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Gen, Introspection, Mentions Of Neal Everywhere, Missing Scene, Missing Year (Once Upon a Time), Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21672886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Sometimes, Henry gets nightmares.
Relationships: Baelfire | Neal Cassidy & Henry Mills & Emma Swan, Henry Mills & Emma Swan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	Stains

**Author's Note:**

> This was born out of me wanting to write some Mommy Emma. _And_ I was thinking about Henry arriving in Storybrooke without his memories and immediately asking Snowing if they knew his dad, which made me want to come up with a fic about why he'd be a relevant thought, since he theoretically never met him.  
>  Also, I love the idea of their real lives bleeding through while they are asleep because I love theorizing about how magic works. So. Enjoy!

Sometimes, Henry gets nightmares.

It’s to be expected, really, that he’d sometimes wake up screaming and mumbling about a burning room, when their whole life went up in flames only months ago. The kid is stressed, Emma sometimes tries to reason in the middle of the night, when she’s sitting on the couch nursing a cup of hot chocolate as she attempts to calm herself down. Yet, the horrifying sound of Henry’s screams won’t leave her head, and she knows she’ll hardly get any sleep for the rest of the night.

It doesn’t happen every day, but Emma finds herself wide awake more often than not, for no apparent reason, tense as she tries to listen for any sign of distress coming from her son’s room. Generally, she gets up, takes a trip to his door to make sure that he is alright, and she tries to go back to sleep.

One of those nights, head heavy and a veil on her eyes as she takes a peek in his room, wishing so bad to just be asleep, telling herself that everything is _fine_ , she is startled into realizing that she is not imagining anything, not this time.

Henry is quietly shifting in his bed, lying on his back and spasming occasionally, like he’s having some kind of fit. Emma can hear his quiet moans even before she starts making her way to his bed, though she can’t make out the words.

“Henry?” she immediately calls out, her hand already extended in his direction as she crutches down, her heart throbbing at the sight of the tears on his cheeks, of the pained grimace twisting his features. She begins to shake him, if gently. “Henry, hey, wake—”

“Dad?”

Emma’s world comes to a halt, her hand freezing mid-motion and the voice dying in her throat. For a blissful second, she thinks that she imagined it.

“Dad—Dad!” Henry repeats, a little more desperate each time, impossible to misunderstand. “Dad, _help_ —”

Henry’s distressed plead shakes her body out of its shocked paralysis, everything being pushed behind by sheer need to make things better for her son. Everything else—whatever is going on here, she can worry about later.

“Henry,” she calls a little more insistently, cupping his face with both hands and cleaning away a few tears with her thumbs. “Henry, wake up, it’s alright, it’s just a nightmare—”

He comes to with a deep inhale, huge eyes finally blinking in the night, still terrified of whatever was on the other side. He stares at her for a few moments, taking ragged breaths and glancing around at his surroundings.

“Mom?” he eventually gets out, thin and scared in a way that’s more than enough to make something in her chest explode.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” she soothes, gently pulling him up as he clings to her shirt, gratefully hiding into her embrace. He presses his cheek tightly against her chest, arms circling her back and squeezing the air out of her. He’s trembling a little, sniffling quietly as if not to let her hear, and Emma finds nothing better to do than running her fingers through his hair, finding it dump with sweat.

It must have been a really bad one.

_Dad—Dad!_

She swallows something thick, trying to take a breath without letting Henry know how rattled she is. What could he possibly have been dreaming about? Why now? Henry has never—well, yes, he obviously has shown _some_ interest in his father, enough that about a year ago she eventually told him the ugly truth about how much of a lying bastard he was, but—but this is _weird_. It has never happened before.

There were bad Father’s Days, though Henry always tried not to let it show too much, in an attempt at sparing her feelings, she supposes, and he seemed pretty bummed about the story of how he was born but—she made it _clear_ that his father never knew about him in the first place.

Henry was never supposed to feel _abandoned_ by him. She told him that the only one who was abandoned there was _her_. He was never supposed to wake up in a cold sweat, reaching for a faceless figure and wondering why they didn’t want him, what he could have _possibly_ done so wrong that—

“Henry?” she calls out, her voice a little unsteady. She doesn’t know why she’s whispering, since it’s only the two of them, as always.

The answer she gets is a noncommittal noise, half-buried in her shirt.

She holds on a little tighter, hesitating a few extra seconds before she finally asks: “What were you dreaming about, kid?”

Maybe they can talk about it a little, maybe—maybe there’s something that she’s missed. The burning room that he mentioned before, that she gets, of course he would dream about fire—but what brought _this_ on?

“A jungle,” Henry mumbles, after a few moments. “I think. It was weird.”

A part of her doesn’t want to push. She wants to leave well enough alone, close her eyes, cover her ears, move along and pretend like she didn’t hear a thing. But she stopped running away from difficult things the moment she held Henry into her arms and she realized she wouldn’t be able to let him go, not for _anything_ , and—she’s supposed to at least _try_ to deal with this.

(Whatever it is that Henry is going through, he doesn’t deserved to be buried in it alone just because she’s too scared to ask questions.)

“Anything else?” she prompts, as gentle as she can make it, running one hand up and down his back.

Henry sniffles, and she feels him shrug. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “I can’t remember.”

She nods, more to herself than to him, squeezing him a little tighter. “That’s alright,” she says, though she isn’t sure she believes him. “Maybe we can talk it about it tomorrow. Do you want to sleep with me for the rest of the night?”

Henry frantically nods at the offer, without missing a beat, and Emma would like to think that her relief is only born out of knowing that she will now have him within immediate reach until sunrise, instead of out of having realized that she can drop the subject of the dream for the time being.

(She can’t fully convince herself, and it only makes her feel so much worse about everything.)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates comments, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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